Posted on 01/08/2017 3:45:36 PM PST by Bigg Red
I have been wanting to visit England for a long time. Perhaps we should schedule our visit for Christmastime. :)
Apologies! I should have done a better job of proofreading.
This sentence:
The evening concludes back “There are no catering or toilet facilities at the farmyard with spiced wassail cakes and English cider.
Should read:
The evening concludes back at the farmyard with spiced wassail cakes and English cider.
Druids.
I guess it’s better than sacrificing a young virgin to make sure they get a good apple crop.
Pure paganism, and not something to be mixed with Christianity.
"The new vicar had never wanted a picture-postcard parishor a huge and haunted vicarage. Nor had she wanted to walk into a dispute over a controversial play about a 17th-century clergyman accused of witchcraft, a story that certain long-established families would rather remained obscure. But this is Ledwardine, steeped in cider and secrets. A paradise of cobbled streets and timber-framed houses. And alsoas Merrily Watkins and her teenage daughter, Jane, discovera village where horrific murder is a tradition that spans centuries."
It's the only book in the series I've read so far. They are very thick books, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and have the next two on my bookshelf to read.
Sounds like something from THE GOLDEN BOUGH by Frasier or THE EVIL EYE by Elworthy.
Can THE GREEN MAN or THE WICKER MAN be far behind?
I have an apple tree.
Let me tell you the secret to a good crop of apples.
Dogs. Specifically, water dogs.
We had a terrible crop this year.
I tried to figure out what went wrong.
Our dog, The Older Black Brother, passed away before this growing season.
He loved to play with the hose in the back by the apple tree when I turned the water on. He would drag the hose around and put it down and scratch up the wet, dead grass.
He could do that for hours.
Well, he wasn’t there this summer to water (and perhaps fertilize) the apple tree.
The back lawn wasn’t as healthy this summer without his thatching.
The secret to a good crop for fruit trees is to get a dog.
I sure miss that guy.
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This isn’t really the primary meaning of “wassail,” although it may have been a natural outcome of Christmas drinking ceremonies.
The primary meaning it to wish someone good health in a toast at a winter holiday drinking celebration.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/wassail?s=t
“The back lawn wasnt as healthy this summer without his thatching.”
I wish our dog would keep it down to “thatching”. I suppose he does keep the scare into the moles with all of his digging though.
I’d rather have the dog than a nice yard. Condolences on the loss of your buddy.
If an apple howls at me I’m gonna howl right back at it.
Then I’m gonna run away real fast. An apple that howls is just odd enough to be taken as a potential threat.
After a year in which our Jonalicious apple tree, already well over the age it should be heavily producing, failed to produce much of a crop, Dad took an axe and led us all out back in the snow to the tree, where he proceeded to threaten it if it failed again while slapping it several times up and down the trunk with the broad side of the axe. We’d never seen him yell at a tree before, or anything else so weird, so it was quite memorable.
The tree produced a bumper crop that year.
While there isn’t much to the threats, of course, it is true that stimulating apple tree trunks by thumping the bark does do soething to the tree to induce heavy flowering...maybe like other plants that try to carry out one last hurrah to reproduce when they are dying, injuring an apple tree triggers a “last hurrah” response without the tree actually dying.
If you want to see the Chanctonbury Morris Men’s Mummer’s Play, St George and the Dragon, performed, they are in Washington every Boxing Day at a pub. Cannot remember which one. Washington is near the south coast. They really are partiers!
Sorry, I did not mean to imply that it is Christian. I am a Christian, but I think I could enjoy a pre-Chrisitian tradition like this even though I don’t believe in its “powers”.
True.
Sorry you lost your pup.
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